1/28 MOEMS #3 and Posters

Scheduling has been tight very tight this winter.  Because last Monday was off for MLK day, this is only our third session so far. The last two weeks were both oriented around Math Circle type activities to  get everyone into the flow of the Club.  However that meant  I’m a bit behind schedule administering MOEMS tests and I felt that we had to do the third one today.  At the same time, despite Mathcounts being on this Saturday, we couldn’t do any kind of prep session this year.   (See last  year’s version: here)   I’m  not terribly upset by that, since I don’t really focus on training for it all Fall (which is an option many follow) and  I don’t think it has a huge impact.  But I do wish as usual that the this time of year flowed more slowly.

At any rate, this months’ MOEMS  test was interesting for several reasons.   

1) Fractions and Decimals. There was a problem with rates given in decimals and one question  with a fractional answer. That’s quite unusual but a trend I’m hoping continues.

2) Overall performance improved over the very difficult second one but almost no one managed to figure out the last combinatorics problem.  In conjunction with  other evidence, I think this is pointing out a weak point that I should focus on.  So I’m considering more combinatorics focused days.  I’m going to look around for ideas on what would work  well.

Also in a first for me rather than giving a puzzle to the early finishers, at one of the girl’s suggestion I brought in posters for the kids to make and bring to MathCounts.   Overall, this was highly motivating and the kids seemed to have a lot of fun making them. But the tradeoff was that I had to continually intervene and remind kids to whisper while working in order not to disturb everyone else.

So  I think while I’ll probably make posters again. Given the excitement that they generate, I think they need to be standalone activities not something the kids can work on mostly quietly.